At 07:38 AM 1/28/98 -0500, George Murphy wrote:
> I can't offer much experiential response - theoretical physics
>doesn't present lots of ethical dilemmas, & as a pastor I'd better have
>some coherence between my religious & "professional" ethics. But a few
>general points -
> 1) I wonder what you mean by "traditional Christian ethics".
Well, now that you mention it, so do I. I suppose I meant something
like this. What I was taught in seminary as "Christian Ethics," was divided
into two parts. On the one hand, there was the divine law, expressed as
norms, rules, principles, guidelines and commandments. It struck me then
(and still does) as a move to reduce Christianity down to a system of
ethical practice. Frankly, I find it odd to call that sort of thing,
"Christianity." But the notion that Christianity essentially embraces a set
of divine principles for righteous living is apparently attractive to many.
On the other hand, I was taught that "Christian Ethics" can be summarized in
the mandate, "Love one another." But "love," no matter what its source, and
no matter what its object, is not a component of ethics. It is, rather, a
specific type of psychological motivation. I may be prompted to perform
some act by love, meaning that I might be motivated by love in any number of
my activities. But being motivated in this way does not tell me what is
good or bad, right or wrong, appropriate or inappropriate. There is no
ethical "content" to love, such that I can make sound moral judgments on the
basis of being moved by love.
So, I think that by "traditional Christian ethics," I had in mind
this sort of reliance on prescriptions derived from divine law, together
with the injunction to love. When conducting my research, I've treated any
response that indicates the respondent derives her ethical resources from
such sources as church, Sunday school, the Bible, doctrine, theology,
worship or prayer
as a response grounded in "religious ethics."
>Certainly the type of relatively simple deontological ethics which many
>Christians learn in Sunday School may not be helpful in many situations
>of modern science & technology. Perhaps that indicates a need for
>training in more satisfactory Christian ethics.
Originally, this was own motivation for studying professional
ethics. I've frequently been struck by the difficulty so many Christians
who occupy professional roles have in "translating" their commitment to
Christ into suitable strategies for moral decision-making in the workplace.
It may be that "simple deontological ethics" is a likely culprit; any system
that suggests there are universal moral principles (good any time, any
place) that can be made to fit snugly all varieties of idiosyncratic
professional contexts is already off to a bad start. I'm not any longer
persuaded that developing a "more satisfactory Christian ethics" is the
answer here, but I'd certainly be interested in seeing what that might look
like.
> 2) Professional codes of ethics may not be connected explicitly
>with religion, but they need not be incompatible. The requirement of
>honesty in business dealings is the same whether derived from the 7th
>Commandment, Confucius, or a purely pragmatic ethic. Of course this is
>why some notion of natural law seems plausible.
Shrewd observations. There's no need for incompatibility,
contradiction, or even tension between the two. I confess that, as I seek
to achieve the highest standards of moral excellence in the profession of
teaching, I rarely recur back to my Christian faith for *specific* guidance.
But I certainly exhibit my Christian faith here in a variety of ways.
There's no incompatibility that I can discern. My faith in Christ doesn't
tell me how to be a good teacher; the standards of excellence inherent in
the practice itself can. As for those standards, honesty is certainly a
primary virtue. Primary, and ubiquitous. I cannot think of any
professional practice that would not have honesty on its short list of core
virtues. But there are a large assortment of virtues, and some of them are
not necessarily relevant in all professions.
> 3) Formulations of explicitly Christian ethics may provide a
>foundation but not detailed prescriptions for the specific issues of
>engineering, medicine, &c. Christians in these fields need not try to
>trace every aspect of the ethical codes of their professions back to
>explicitly Christian principles. But they should, at some point, try to
>see if those codes are generally consistent with, e.g., "You shall love
>your neighbor as yourself."
Allowing some latitude for "generally consistent," I think this is
exactly right. The crafting of professional ethics is not necessarily
connected to the "love" motivation (or any specific motivation), but there's
room for symbiosis.
> 4) There may be professional codes which are _not_ consistent
>with Christianity. The implicit code of professional ethics for Nazi
>medical research is an example. (I recognize the danger of appealing to
>extreme cases, but _reductio ad absurdum_ is a valid form of argument.)
> Thus a Christian should not simply check his or her religiously based
>ethics at the door when entering a profession.
Just one quibble: I don't like the "Nazi" example, and here's why.
It suggests that the ethical offense here is a manifestation of an evil
belonging to a political system or a culture, and the proper line of
resistance is a religiously based ethics. But insofar as medical research
is a professional practice flourishing in Germany, the U.S., Russia and
South Africa (or anywhere else), then medical research is an international
community of practice, with standards of ethical conduct appropriate to that
practice. Any practitioner in that profession could have (and should have)
risen and declared that what was going on in Nazi Germany was a violation of
the moral standards upheld by that particular practice. The moral evil here
was not merely political, it was professional; and the appropriate response
should have come from within the profession itself. If the individual
practitioner objecting to the Nazi medical research is *motivated* by, say,
a love of Christ, that's perfectly natural. But the identification of the
evil being carried out within the profession, and the summons to
professional accountability, properly belongs to the professional practice
itself.
Hmm. Those really weren't such "brief responses" after all, were they?
Tom Pearson
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
Thomas D. Pearson
Department of History & Philosophy
The University of Texas-Pan American
Edinburg, Texas
e-mail: pearson@panam1.panam.edu